MIAMI GARDENS — The Miami Dolphins’ secondary is a unit with a lot of questions surrounding it entering Sunday’s opener at the Indianapolis Colts.
Some of the unanswered questions still revolve around how personnel among defensive backs will be used at the dawn of a new season.
For one, there is the question of who starts at safety opposite Minkah Fitzpatrick between Ashtyn Davis and Ifeatu Melifonwu.
“A lot of those things, they’re still in flux a little bit,” Dolphins defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver said Thursday.
“Never get concerned much about who’s starting,” he continued. “I just care about who’s finishing, who’s finishing plays, who’s finishing tackles.”
Both safeties are newcomers to the Dolphins, signed early in free agency. Davis has been listed first on the team’s official depth chart since early in training camp, even as a calf injury sidelined him. Melifonwu started camp on the non-football injury list, and then he worked himself into practice snaps as Davis was out.
“We got a really good room of safeties. Who’s going to start? We’ll see,” Weaver said. “What I do know is that, at some point, they’re all going to play because they all deserve to be on the field and can be impactful.”
At cornerback, second-year player Storm Duck should be one of the starters.
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Is Jack Jones holding on to the other starting spot on the outside? Has Rasul Douglas done enough in a short period of time since signing last week to earn his way into the game right away?
“We’ll see. I think that’s a lot to ask of anybody who’s been here for, what, a week and a half, two weeks,” Weaver said. “His football acumen is so high, so he’s gotten a lot of what we’re trying to do already.”
And then, at nickel cornerback, the Dolphins have discovered in the preseason rookie Jason Marshall Jr., despite playing exclusively on the boundary previously in his career, can fill that role due to his physicality at the line of scrimmage.
Weaver also pointed to safeties Fitzpatrick and Melifonwu as capable of playing the nickel, leading one to believe there will be plenty of mixing and matching in the Dolphins secondary.
Beyond the pass rush helping defensive backs limit how long they have to be in coverage, a possible advantage the Dolphins could have lies in the variety of looks Weaver may present to opponents.
This story will be updated.
